Charles the Rhennishman
Charles Zigmar (known as "Charles the Rhennishman") was the first president of the newly independent West Yorna. He was best known for bringing about said independence in the Four Brothers War. Early life Charles was the third son of King Henry III of Rhen, and was raised in a constant state of competition with his three brothers. He was the most bookish of the four, and preferred to take diplomatic approaches rather than become directly involved in most of their disputes. In practice, this meant that Charles tended to lose out rather frequently, further amplifying his already solitary nature. In his adolescence, Charles became fascinated with the details of administration, and so he began to petition Henry III for land of his own to control. However, Henry had no immediate response, but Charles continued his seemingly ineffectual efforts. Four Brothers War When Henry III died in 93, Charles was granted the territory of West Yorna (then Rhennish Yorna) in his will. West Yorna was currently undergoing a rebellion at this time, during which Henry had been killed, and so Charles immediately set about making peace there. As the Four Brothers War began in Rhen proper, Charles managed to hash out the Jalgor Armistice— in return for a year of peace, Charles made modest concessions. Charles' machinations became clear the following spring, as he declared West Yornal independence; this was met with widespread cheer by his constituency, and so Yornal revolutionary sentiment was redirected. However, the embattled King Henry IV launched a counteroffensive that summer and scored a series of victories. Ultimately, Henry had to call off his invasion to deal with other fronts of the war, and so in the period from 95–97 was largely occupied by Charles consolidating Yornal power and putting down loyalist factions within his own territory. Thus, Henry's next assaults on West Yorna (in the winter of 97 and the spring of 101) went poorly, and a unified Yornal front threw off the Rhennish king. Yornal constitution In 101, Henry granted West Yorna its independence in the Treaty of Dirgot. Charles thanked Henry with an additional regiment of soldiers, most of whom were ethnic Rhennishmen who already wanted to leave the new Yornal state. At this point, Charles turned his attention to the governance of the newly independent nation, and after a long period of negotiations West Yorna was established as a presidential republic. In the first election, in autumn 101, Charles ran unopposed and was therefore elected as West Yorna's first president. Presidency and later life Charles spent the first few years of his term focusing on economic matters, his true passion and a matter that needed increasing attention in the wake of the war. This led to a few quiet years in West Yorna, punctuated by a series of offers of unification from East Yorna— offers which Charles summarily denied. The consequence of these rejections was that East Yorna's Harald III declared a war of conquest in 106. Charles, little interested in further warring, appointed several generals to do the fighting on his behalf; however, Charles' generals were relatively inexperienced, and so the war ended up having a mixed result. When the east sued for peace in 110, they had made only modest territorial gains, but territorial gains all the same. The Yornal constitution forbade reelection, so Charles left the political sphere after ending his term in 111. He lived in Dirgot until 120, at which point he returned to Collinschwef and lived there until ultimately dying of respiratory failure in the winter of 127. Personal life Charles married a Yornal woman, Ingrid Miseljan, in 98 DR. They had two children in 101 and 104, and the family was close: when Charles was not occupied with matters of state, he spent much of his time together with his wife and children. Once both his children were of age, Charles wished to return to his homeland; however, his children stayed in West Yorna, and so the family drifted apart in the last years of Charles' life. Category:Rhennishmen Category:Elected Officials Category:Government Heads